


When I was younger, handsomer and stronger

by thesaddestboner



Series: Variations on Grief [1]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Death, Depression, Detroit Tigers, Gen, Non-Famous Family Members As Characters, Non-Linear Narrative, Retirement, Survivor Guilt, mention of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/pseuds/thesaddestboner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Joel doesn’t show up for batting practice one afternoon before an important game against the Twins.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I was younger, handsomer and stronger

**Author's Note:**

> Weird and non-linear vaguely-set-in-the-future!fic. Title from “Westfall,” by Okkervil River. Past-tense is present and present-tense is past. Um, yeah. 
> 
> I blame this on [**unreckless**](http://unreckless.livejournal.com/), because it’s only fair and it really is all her fault _somehow_ , and watching way too much _Criminal Minds_ this last week. 
> 
> Thanks to [**unreckless**](http://unreckless.livejournal.com/), [**owllover711**](http://owllover711.livejournal.com/), and [**learnthemusic**](http://learnthemusic.livejournal.com/) for audiencing and betaing.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thesaddestboner) and [tumblr](http://saddestboner.tumblr.com).

> When I was younger, handsomer and stronger,  
>  I felt like I could do anything.
> 
> \- “Westfall,” Okkervil River

Joel doesn’t show up for batting practice one afternoon before an important game against the Twins. At first, no one suspects anything’s off because Joel has a tendency for showing up late to batting practice and they’re all more than used to his quirks. 

“Is a bullpen thing,” Valverde tells Justin, when he notes Joel’s undisturbed locker.

“Blowing off B.P. is a bullpen thing?” Justin’s kind of pissed, because it’s selfish of Joel not to show up without a word. And unlike him, all told. “Joel usually calls if he’s gonna be late, anyways,” Justin adds.

Valverde just shrugs his broad shoulders, slips on those funky looking goggles, and stomps away from his locker.

Justin cuts his gaze back towards Joel’s untouched locker, and the row of crisp white jerseys hanging on bent, rusted wire hangers. There’s an upturned navy cap on one of the shelves with a crumpled photo of Joel, his wife, and their son tucked in the brim. They’re smiling, happy. Joel has his big arms wrapped around both of them, and they’re all wearing Colgate-bright grins.

Justin grabs his own cap out of his locker and trots after Valverde for the field.

-

They all start to get worried when they realize Joel still hasn’t shown up and gametime is only a handful of hours away.

Justin sits in front of his locker and stares at his cell phone. He presses some buttons, thinks that maybe Joel left him a message he just didn’t hear. 

**No new messages.**

Justin groans and tosses the cell phone in his stall with a resounding, satisfying crack. He scrubs his hands through his hair and drags them over his face. His stomach is twisted up in knots and he can’t even explain why. He knows he shouldn’t be worrying, he knows Joel’s probably fine. Probably just slept in or got caught in traffic, or something. He’s done it before, it’s nothing to worry about.

Valverde wanders into the clubhouse, holding a cell phone in one hand and his goggles in the other. “Can’t reach him,” Valverde says, passing by Justin to his own locker, head held down, broad shoulders slumping. His feet scuff noisily on the nubbly, drab carpet.

Justin speed dials Joel’s number and holds his phone to his ear. Joel’s cheery, lightly accented voice rings out: “Hey, it’s Joel. Leave a message an’ if I deem it worthy, I might get back to ya. Peace out.” Justin sighs and lowers his hand slowly, the weight of the cell phone inexplicably heavy.

“Can’t get ahold of ’im?” Inge leans casually against Justin’s locker and rests his scuffed up third baseman’s glove on his hip.

“Nah.” Justin shakes his head. “And Papá couldn’t reach him either. ’s not like him, Brandon.”

Inge pats Justin on the chest with his glove. “ ’m sure it’s nothin’ to worry ’bout, man. He’ll waltz in here like he does, half hour before gametime. Bet on it.”

Justin feels slightly reassured, but he just can’t shake the funny, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach that something about this is very wrong.

-

Justin had circled the date twice on the wall calendar in red Sharpie and scribbled _Joel_ in the lower righthand corner. 

He still celebrated Joel’s birthday with a Corona in his honor. This anniversary shouldn’t have been any different. 

Justin went to the fridge for a beer. A dim, milky yellow light flickered and sputtered out, and he made a mental note to call the repair man to have it fixed. There were three different kinds of expensive French cheese, a half-empty bottle of wine, a bruised apple core, and a hunk of ham wrapped in butcher’s paper, but no beer.

Justin sighed and slammed the fridge door shut. The scraps of newsprint he’d stuck to the door with old chipped magnets fluttered like wings. Justin pitched forward and leaned his forehead against its cool surface, let his eyes slip shut.

The pain on the inside of his skull was throbbing furiously now. He’d been getting headaches a lot since Joel—since everything. The team tried coaxing him into seeing a sports psychologist and then outright demanded it, but he dug his heels in and refused. His performance between the chalk lines had, somehow, improved after everything that had happened. He was fine. There was nothing to worry about. 

He was _fine_.

The phone chose that moment to ring and it shook him violently out of his thoughts. His heartbeat jackrabbited loudly in his ears, and his face grew hot, sweaty.

The phone rang a second time and he picked it up with a shaking hand.

“Hello?”

-

He imagines the conversation— _the_ conversation—will go something like this: _We’ve found him. He’s all right—by the grace of God—if a little shaken up_ , and then Justin will say, _Can I see him?_

And they’ll tell him, _He’s been asking for you._

-

“Justin.” 

Emily. He hadn’t heard from her in years. 

“Hey, Em,” he said, taking a deep breath. He tried to sound as casual as he could manage, which wasn’t very casual at all. But Emily had to have been used to it. She _was_ with him for over a decade, after all. “What’s up?”

“The memorial service. Are you—” 

Justin cut her off. “You know I can’t.”

“Justin, everyone is going to be there.”

“I can’t, Em. It wouldn’t—” he said, his voice creaking, straining under the weight. “Wouldn’t be right for me to be there.”

Emily sighed wearily. He imagined she’d lowered her head then, started pinching at the bridge of her nose like she used to when she was frustrated with his attempts at stonewalling her where Joel was concerned. “Rachel and his parents want you there. You weren’t there last year. They missed you.”

Justin closed his eyes again. “You know why I can’t, Em.”

“Please,” she said, her tone turning solicitous. “I—I want to see you too, Justin. I miss you.” _I miss who you used to be_ , he filled in silently for her.

“I miss you too,” he said flatly. He pinched at the bridge of his nose too. He heard once that couples picked up on each other’s habits. He couldn’t remember if he’d read it somewhere, or just heard it on the news.

“Everyone’s going to be there,” she said, trying again. _Foul in the dirt on a 3-2 slider. Protecting the plate._ “If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”

Justin exhaled deeply and squinched his eyes shut hard. _Swing and a drive—it’s deep! Way back! It’s outta here! Walk off homerun!_

“Okay,” he said, willing his voice not to break. “I’ll be there.”

-

The entire team is on pins and needles by the time the doors to the clubhouse are flung open and Leyland marches in with quick, purposeful steps.

“Skip?” Justin rises, tugging his hands on the front of his jersey.

Leyland doesn’t respond, takes his place in front of the coaching staff’s dry erase board. An inspirational quote scribbled in Rafael Belliard’s fussily neat, cramped script looms over Leyland’s shoulder: _Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character._

Leyland tucks a hand into his waistband and straightens his posture, mustache twitching slightly, and Justin knows he’s not going to be delivering good news. 

“I’m afraid I got some bad news,” he says, voice wavering, “about Joel—”

Someone, Justin isn’t really sure who, moans. He thinks it’s the kid, Porcello, and he turns towards his locker. Porcello sags heavily against his best friend, Ryan Perry, and Perry wraps a supporting arm around his shoulders. Both kids look scared out of their fucking minds, look how Justin feels right now.

He turns back to Leyland.

Leyland’s eyes water. “Cops had to bust down the door,” their skipper continues, his voice low, quiet and shaky. “He—he wasn’t there.”

Justin fades out of the conversation—it’s not really even a conversation, it’s a debriefing, something they’ve all seen on TV numerous times. Like something out of a _CSI_ or _Criminal Minds_ episode. This isn’t happening to them, not to Joel, not to one of their brothers.

He presses his knuckles against his eyes to hold back the rapidly expanding headache trying to pound its way out of his skull. Joel wouldn’t go without a fight. He isn’t—he can’t be—

“—signs of a struggle,” Justin catches, and he zones out again.

He’d just seen Joel the previous night. They beat the Twins in a must-win, 3-1. Scherzer had started, scattered six hits over seven. Then Joel came in and retired all the Twins batters he faced, had even stuck out Morneau on a lollipop curve in the dirt, and Valverde had gotten the save. 

It was a solid, uncomplicated win, and most of the team had celebrated with drinks at a local bar. Bonderman begged off because his wife and kids were in town for the weekend, and Porcello had begged off because he was scheduled to pitch the following afternoon. Inge ordered everyone a celebratory round of shots and then put it on Scherzer’s tab. Scherzer was more than happy to pick it up.

“Justin,” somebody says, and he snaps back to the present.

“What? Sorry,” he says, avoiding Inge’s gaze.

“Game’s been postponed,” Inge says, lifting a hand to scratch his fingers through his short, stubbly crew cut.

“What’d Leyland say? About Joel? I kinda zoned out,” Justin says, ducking his head and kicking his heel against the old carpet.

Inge coughs and clears his throat, lets his arm flop limply to his side. “Cops said it looked like there was a struggle,” he says.

Something in Justin constricts at that, grows brittle, and he holds himself very still, lest any sudden movements cause him to shatter into a million pieces. “A struggle?” Justin asks quietly.

“Leyland’s just tryin’ to prepare us for the worst,” Inge murmurs, shifting beside Justin. “Ricky ain’t takin’ it too well.”

“What are we gonna do?” Justin asks.

“Dunno, s’pose we’ll hafta call somebody up—”

“ _No_ ,” Justin says, surprising both himself and Inge with the sharpness of his tone. Inge backs up, just a couple steps. “I mean, about Joel. Shouldn’t we be out looking for him?”

“Leyland says the cops’re gonna contact each of us. ’s all we can do, Ver,” Inge says. He reaches out with a hesitant hand and pats Justin on the chest. “It’ll—it’ll be okay. Bet on it.”

-

Justin stands in front of the simple wooden stake and stares down at it. Nothing but a number and a red marker tied to a stick. Not even a name. He wasn’t worth a name. Not yet.

He wonders why Joel’s family would bother buying a plot without a body. Emily told him it was for closure when he wondered aloud to her, but he still doesn’t get it. It means Joel’s still out there, might still be alive. Putting up a headstone in front of an empty grave just means they’ve given up. They’ve given up on Joel.

Emily had touched his rough, unshaven cheek and said, “That’s not what it means. Not at all.”

He doesn’t feel comforted standing where a headstone will go—Joel’s headstone—knowing that the grave holds no body, holds no true closure. 

He wants to ask Rachel, “What are you burying? You have nobody, no _body_ to bury,” but he doesn’t.

He wants to ask Joel’s parents, “How can you give up on your son? It’s only been a year,” but he doesn’t.

He wants to scoop Marley up in his arms and protect him from all of this horribleness, from all the terrible things people do to each other without reason, wants to cradle the boy’s head protectively against his chest. He wants to tell Marley to believe in fairy tales, to believe in happy endings, that one day his daddy will find his way back to them.

But he doesn’t. He can’t.

-

Emily looked beautiful, of course, but he hadn’t expected anything less. She always looked beautiful, polished and accomplished, and he figured that was a tiny part of why he’d loved her. She’d let her short dark hair grow out since the last time he saw her and it now hung over her shoulders in waves. Diamonds glistened in her ears, and on her fingers. Justin had to turn his eyes away from the diamond on her left ring finger.

She sat in the second row, directly behind Rachel Zumaya. A handsome, albeit bland looking man held tightly onto her hand and glanced around like he thought whoever took Joel might come along and take Emily too.

Justin watched Emily wrap an arm around Rachel and lean forward to rest her chin on her shoulder. Rachel reached up and pressed a thin hand over Emily’s on her shoulder. She was still wearing her wedding band, all these years later.

Rachel wore red, Joel’s favorite color. _Not a color for a funeral_ , Justin noted, with a cool, grim swoop of satisfaction slicing through the pit of his stomach. _She still believes_.

-

After the memorial service, they got together in Inge’s refinished basement for drinks. Justin hadn’t seen a lot of his old teammates in a long time. 

A couple seasons after Joel disappeared, Inge retired, painful knees finally catching up to him and neutralizing his Brooks-Robinson-esque defense. Without the defense, Inge didn’t have a career anymore, and he retired to oversee a fleet of successful used car dealerships in Metro Detroit. Bonderman was traded to Seattle that year too, and was still going, having reinvented himself as a touch-and-feel guy. 

Five seasons after Joel went missing, Justin found himself out of the game, due to fluky off-the-field injuries and too many late nights spent in way too many bars.

He found it kind of funny—in the ‘weird’ sense, not the ‘funny, haha’ sense—that he still marked time by how long Joel had been missing.

-

Justin grabbed himself a fresh beer from the cooler Inge had set up behind the bar. A hand landed on his shoulder and Justin jumped nearly five feet in the air, heart leaping up into his throat.

“Whoa, man, didn’t mean to scare ya.” Perry stepped back and offered Justin an apologetic grin. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis and tipped back on the heels of his loafers.

Justin couldn’t remember ever seeing Perry wear khakis or loafers before. He wasn’t used to seeing the kid—couldn’t really even call him a kid anymore, considering he was in his thirties now—in anything but Ed Hardy t-shirts and baggy jeans. He held out his hand and Perry grasped it firmly. “Long time, no see,” Justin said, setting the bottle down on the counter. “How you likin’ New York?”

“New York’s been pretty good to me so far,” Perry said, shrugging and smiling. He reached up and rubbed a hand through his short blond hair. “I’m sure that’ll change once I blow my first save, though.”

“How’s the family?” Justin asked.

“Wife and kid are both doin’ great,” Perry said, both his grin and eyes softening. “R.J.‘s starting pre-school this fall. We just found out we’re expecting a girl in December.”

Justin nodded and smiled, pretending to be interested. He didn’t really keep up with Perry after he retired, but he heard occasionally from Bonderman and he was the one who told him Perry was going to the Mets.

He couldn’t really explain it, but he’d always felt like the guys who had been on the team when Joel went missing should have stayed. Valverde shouldn’t have gone on to bigger and better things on the West Coast, Bonderman shouldn’t have gotten himself traded at the deadline to a contender the year after that, Perry shouldn’t have rejected arbitration a few years after _that_. 

Justin wasn’t going anywhere. They shouldn’t have been able to either.

-

Inge reclined in a battered La-Z-Boy, lap full of sleepy five year old. He patted a hand through his daughter’s hair, the diamonds of his American League Championship ring glittering and sparkling amidst the silky blonde strands. Justin could hear Inge’s boys roughhousing noisily upstairs.

“Long day,” Inge muttered to no one in particular, stroking his daughter’s hair lightly. He curled it around his fingers and let it slip from his hand like a pale waterfall. The girl stirred but didn’t wake, just shoved her thumb in her mouth and curled her knees closer to her chest.

“Hasn’t been anything but one long day,” Justin said, looking down at the dewy beer bottle in his hand. He couldn’t discern the name on the label so he started to peel it away. He must’ve been real fucking gone.

“Know what you mean,” Porcello said quietly, materializing at Justin’s shoulder as if out of thin air.

Justin couldn’t help but flinch away from Porcello, and he was sure he noticed. “Yeah,” he said, feeling inexplicably guilty, “yeah.”

Valverde took a sip of beer. “You thinking it get easier,” he started, but didn’t finish, let the unsaid words hang in the air between them all. 

_But it doesn’t, it never does_ , Justin supplied silently.

He scanned the long, sallow faces around him, the bruises under their eyes, the downturned laugh lines at the corners of their mouths, and wondered what Joel would think. Joel would probably laugh at them, call them morose motherfuckers or something. 

“I wonder where he is,” Justin blurted, fingers wrapped tightly around his beer bottle. His throat tightened and his stomach did that stupid swoopy thing again.

“He’s in a better place,” Everett said, carefully.

“No,” Justin shook his head, because of _course_ Everett would say something like that, “that’s not what I mean. Not at all.”

“You mean _physically_?” Everett looked sickened at the thought.

“No. I mean, I wonder if he’s okay? I wonder if he misses us,” Justin said. “If he remembers.”

Inge looked down and coughed, focused on braiding his daughter’s fine hair. Valverde studied his bottle intently, and Porcello shifted further from Justin and closer to Perry on the couch the the three of them were sharing.

“Justin,” Inge said.

“I just wonder sometimes, that’s all.” Justin took a convulsive sip of beer.

“We all do,” Inge said, draping a tattooed arm loosely over his daughter.

“It’s just, it’s been seven years,” Perry said. He didn’t need to finish the thought. Everyone knew what he meant without having to come right out and say it.

Justin nodded to his bottle slowly. “I have to go home.”

“Justin?” Inge shifted his daughter against his chest and stood up gingerly. The girl’s legs dangled lifelessly, like a doll’s, and Justin felt sick to his stomach.

“I have to go,” Justin repeated, putting the bottle down on the coffee table. He could feel five sets of eyes on him, burning holes into him.

Inge stepped forward and put a hand out to stop him, but Justin moved around him and practically ran out of the basement and up the stairs.

-

The fans set up a memorial at the base of the massive growling tiger statue in front of Comerica Park. Justin’s just thankful they don’t have to pass it on their way into the park. The players have a separate entrance. Justin doesn’t know what he’d do if he had to face that reminder every day.

The league had postponed two of their games after the story of Joel’s disappearance broke, but it doesn’t feel like enough. It feels wrong to even be suiting up without Joel there. It feels wrong to see those pressed jerseys hanging there in his locker like ghosts.

Justin says to Valverde that it feels disrespectful to keep playing while Joel’s out there, somewhere. He tells Valverde he wouldn’t have cared if the league had wiped out the rest of their season.

“Only thing we can do is play,” Valverde says, “for him,” and he adjusts his goggles, pushing them up his nose.

Justin nods and swallows, and looks at his feet.

The weight on his shoulders has grown heavier day by day. The longer they go without finding Joel, the more he feels like he’s sinking.

-

They call up a kid, Weinhardt, to take Joel’s place on the roster.

Justin watches this kid who slinks into the clubhouse a few days after the disappearance, looking wide-eyed and guilty, and can’t help but feel sorry for him. The kid knows he’ll never be able to fill all the empty spaces Joel’s absence has left behind.

He tries, though. He does his best. He’s not Joel, though. 

With Joel missing, the bullpen roles get reshuffled like a deck of cards, and guys get thrown out of whack. Coke takes Perry’s late-innings, high pressure spot, Perry slides almost effortlessly into Joel’s set-up role, and Valverde is still Valverde, but the rest of the pen is a mess.

Justin thinks that they might be using Joel’s absence as an excuse, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s not his place to. Plus, he knows they miss Joel just as much as he does, if not more. The bullpen is a strange, different animal, a completely cohesive and separate unit from the rest of the pitching staff, from the rest of the team. 

And now that unit’s missing one of its most important pieces.

-

They manage to cling to a very tenuous first place until the middle of September, when the Twins finally overtake them with a sweep at Comerica. It’s felt inevitable since Joel disappeared, and when it finally happens, Justin isn’t even surprised. He feels like he’s been stepped on, but he’s not shocked or even upset. He mostly just feels relief.

After the final game—a meek 3-0 loss in which they don’t hit a ball out of the infield off Scott Baker—it feels like all the air’s been let out of the stadium and Justin knows they’re done. He feels it in his core like he can feel that Joel is still out there, somewhere. His stomach goes cold and his heart clenches up in his chest.

He rests his chin on the railing and stares out at center field, at the big, black stenciled **54** in the bullpen. Sunlight stabs into his eyes and makes him wince, but he doesn’t look away. His eyes start to water but he can’t make himself stop looking, not until Joel’s number is burned big and white into the backs of his eyelids. His eyes grow hot, prickly, and he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek.

He suddenly feels so, so _heavy_ , like the weight of the world is finally crashing down on him and he doesn’t care that he can’t hold it up anymore. He’s not Atlas. He was never cut out to be Atlas.

He feels a hand clap him between his shoulder blades and then linger.

“It’s okay.” 

Leyland.

Justin lowers his head, cheeks flushing in shame, and he wipes his eyes on the shoulder of his navy pull-over. “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s okay, kid,” Leyland says, slipping his hand away. “Do what you need to do.” Justin listens to Leyland’s cleats click against the concrete as he leaves the dugout.

Justin opens his eyes and stares up at the sky. It’s powder blue with a few wisps of white clouds, Chargers colors. He thinks Joel would like it.

Justin turns and heads for the clubhouse.

-

He feels a small sense of satisfaction and vindication when the Twins go down in three to the Red Sox. Emily doesn’t get why he makes her watch the Twins and Red Sox with him. He’s never watched a postseason series he wasn’t somehow involved in before, so why start now?

All he can think is: _Joel_ , but he knows he’d never really be able to explain that to her. It wouldn’t make sense to her. She’d just think he was obsessing, which he probably was. Joel’s been missing for months, for almost half a year, and shouldn’t he be over it now? He just knows she wouldn’t understand.

-

Justin went into the one room of his place he never visited, his baseball memorabilia room, and made a beeline for the closet. He kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, articles, and pictures that spanned the course of his career in there, hadn’t looked at it in years and years. He couldn’t bring himself to look at it until now.

He pulled the scrapbook down and set it on his desk. It fell open to a random, yellowing page. **2006: That Magical Season!** was printed in Emily’s loopy, girly handwriting, and she’d drawn flowers and other happy images in the margins. All her i’s were dotted with little smiley faces.

There was a picture of Justin, Joel and Jordan Tata, and under it, Emily had written, _Opening Day 2006! Co-Rookies of the Year?_ with a smiley face to punctuate the sentence. Justin wondered what had happened to Tata. He’d lost track of him after he retired. He wondered if Tata ever thought about Joel.

Justin flipped to the next page. A scorecard and the lineup from his first victory had been pressed between the pages by Emily’s steady hand. 

He continued to flip through the pages, past the pages that went blank after 2016, the untimely end of his career. A folded picture was tucked between the last two pages and he plucked it out. Joel had his head on Justin’s shoulder and their hair was wet. Both of them had bloodshot eyes. Justin turned the picture over; _September 24, 2006! Celebrate good times, come on!_ stared back at him in unfamiliar handwriting.

Justin felt the tears sliding down his cheeks before he registered he was actually crying. He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat but he couldn’t dislodge it. Fear spiked through him; he’d seen this kind of stuff on TV, on those criminal and doctor shows. He was having a panic attack.

Justin put his head down on the cool wood of his desk and struggled for breath.

-

Emily packs her bags three weeks before Christmas and says, in a voice that brooks no argument, “I’m leaving.”

He stares at her, feeling emptied and turned inside out like the pockets of an old pair of pants. “What do you mean?”

“I’m going back to Virginia,” she says, lowering her head. “I—I’m sorry, Justin. I love you, I do, but I can’t do this anymore.”

“Emily,” he tries, but she cuts him off gently, and somehow that hurts even more than any barbed words she could possibly throw his way.

“I’m sorry, Justin,” she says again, wrapping her arms around herself. She sounds brittle. “It’s like you’re not even here anymore. It’s like when we lost Joel, we lost you too.”

Justin’s face grows warm, but he isn’t sure if it’s grief, shame, anger, or all of the above. “That’s not true,” he whispers.

She raises her head and he can see dark mascara streaks running down her pale cheeks. “You know it is,” she says, softly. It’s not an accusation, but it stabs and draws blood all the same. “I don’t blame you. I really don’t. We’ve all been through so much.”

“But, at the end of the day, you’re still leaving,” he says dully.

She nods to the floor. “I need time. Time to get my head on straight.” Emily lets out a shuddery sigh. “I just keep thinking, what if it’d been you? Would I hold up as good as Rachel has? I don’t think I would.”

“It wasn’t me,” Justin says.

“I know. I just—” Emily stops herself short and reaches into her pocket. She pulls a ball of Kleenex out and dabs at her eyes, smearing the mascara. “This hasn’t been easy on me either, Justin.”

Justin watches her, feeling oddly distanced, detached, like this isn’t happening to him, like it’s happening to some other Justin Verlander and he’s just along for the ride. “It hasn’t been easy on any of us.”

Emily sighs again and stuffs the ball of Kleenex back into her pocket. She picks up her bags and turns toward the door. “I’ll call you when I get in,” she says, quietly.

“Okay,” he says. He wants to run after her, wrap his arms around her and never let her go. He lost a friend. He doesn’t want to lose her too. He stays where he stands like he’s been rooted to the tile. “ ’Bye, Em.”

“Goodbye, Justin.” She opens the door and slips out.

Justin forces himself to raise his head and watch her leave him.

-

Rachel and Joel’s kid brother, Rich, come by at the end of the season to pack up Joel’s locker for the winter. They’ll put everything back in its proper place come spring, regardless of whether or not—just, the locker will remain as Joel left it until he comes back, Rachel tells him.

Justin hangs in front of his own locker, a cardboard box at his feet, and watches as Rachel separates the dirty clothes from the clean, unworn items, and Rich sifts through Joel’s personal belongings. Rachel hadn’t wanted to look through his pictures, books, magazines, so Rich volunteered.

He watches as Rich drops some science fiction novels in his box, and then tosses a tin of lip balm and an unopened pack of Big League Chew after them. He watches Rachel’s small, thin hands sort through a nest of tangled navy socks. Her wedding ring slips down her finger and stops at her knuckle.

Justin glances at his own box, which is mostly empty, save a few photographs of Emily, some newspaper clippings about Joel, and a Shakespeare quote printed on flowery paper. He kicks at the box and sighs, rubbing his hand through his hair.

“Richie,” he hears Rachel murmur, “go take the box out to the car.”

Justin looks up to watch Rich pick up the box and carry it out of the clubhouse. Rachel stands and slaps her hands off on her billowy skirt. She catches his eye and Justin looks down quickly at his box.

“Justin?” She approaches him with small, careful steps.

“Hey,” he says, standing to greet her. Justin wraps a hand around Rachel’s thin wrist. He doesn’t remember her being this frail. “How—how are you doing?”

Rachel tips her chin up to meet his eyes. “I’m doing all right,” she says, twisting her hand free to curl her fingers around Justin’s. “What about you?”

“I’m—” He pauses, considering the possible answers he could give. He goes with honesty. “I’m better.”

Rachel smiles kindly. “Good. I’m glad.” She lowers her head, curly hair falling in waves in front of her face. She pulls something out of her purse and presses it in his hand. “I wanted you to have this, Justin. Take care.” Rachel slips away.

Justin looks down and opens his hand.

-

At first, he’s pretty jumpy, thinks that every phone call will be about Joel, or Joel himself, calling to tell Justin he’s all right.

It’s never about him and it’s never him, though, no matter how badly Justin wants it to be.

He starts wondering if it ever will be.

-

The cops wonder publicly whether or not Joel’s disappearance was an inside job. There’s a lot that doesn’t add up, they say. They turn their focus on Rachel for a while, even Rich and their parents, Yvonne and Joel Sr., but they can’t pin anything on any of them.

They’re never officially named suspects, just persons of interest, but it takes a long time for the stigma to fade.

-

Last Updated: July 10. 2016 1:02AM

### Tom Gage

# Verlander calls it quits; knee injury too much to overcome

 _Detroit_ \-- Early on in his career, there were some within the organization who felt the heavy workload would eventually be what did Justin Verlander in. They believed former Tigers manager Jim Leyland was setting Verlander up for an inevitable visit with Dr. James Andrews. In the end, it was a tragic, fluke knee injury that cut Verlander’s career short and may have robbed him of a potential enshrinement in Cooperstown.

-

One night, Justin decided Joel just walked away from it all and he was somewhere, wandering, safe and healthy but alone. 

He didn’t have any proof, and it would have been out of character for Joel because Justin knew he loved his wife and family, and God and baseball, and wouldn’t have walked away for anything. 

It was easier to swallow than all the other alternatives floating around, though.

-

Joel’s memorabilia shoots up in price on eBay by five hundred per cent after just two weeks.

It makes Justin sick to his stomach.

-

Justin ends up on the disabled list a few weeks after Joel disappears. The team labels it ‘acute stress disorder,’ but Justin hears the whispers around the league, even around his own clubhouse. _Verlander’s lost his mind_ , _Verlander’s had a psychotic break_ , _Verlander this, Verlander that_ , _blah blah blah_. He hears whispers that he can’t handle the pressure, he even hears whispers that he’s responsible for Joel’s disappearance. 

That’s the worst one out of all of them. He figures that’s probably what lands him on the DL too. Nobody believes him, though. They think he’s just cracked or something, tell him to stop looking at the message boards.

He calls up D-Train to talk about it, even though his situation was different and he keeps insisting he never had any kind of anxiety disorder, and when that proves fruitless, he texts Zack Greinke. Greinke’s situation is different than both Justin’s and D-Train’s, but he’s a little more helpful.

The team asks him to see a psychiatrist this time. _Psychiatrist_ is even scarier to Justin than _sports psychologist_. Sports psychologists just care about chipping through your issues in order to make you a better athlete. Psychiatrists make you delve deep down, actually deal with things.

He agrees, if only to get them off his back.

He never meets with the psychiatrist.

-

“ ’ey, man, we goin’ out or what?” Joel stops next to Justin’s locker and leans his shoulder against it. He flexes his left arm and his tacky Pancho Villa tattoo ripples.

Justin laughs and rolls his eyes. “You, me, and Pancho Villa?”

Joel whacks the cap off Justin’s head, baring his teeth in a feral grin. “Try sayin’ that to his face, bitch.” Joel shoves his arm at Justin’s face but Justin twists away, laughing, and gives him a shove.

“You’re such a dork.”

“Takes one to know one,” Joel cackles, stepping back. He trundles off to his own locker and pulls out his sports coat. “C’mon, man, let’s get goin’! We got drinks wit’ our names on ’em, waitin’ for us! Maybe some hot _chicas_ too.”

Justin laughs, shaking his head, and follows after him.

-

And then the police department labeled it a cold case and shoved it in a closet in a dark warehouse somewhere, where it would be forgotten. They’d decided Joel would never be coming back, and pushed him aside for more important cases.

Rachel, Rich, and Ashley, Yvonne and Joel Sr., even little Marley had gotten their closure. They’d accepted a long time ago that Joel wouldn’t ever be coming back.

Justin couldn’t do that. He clung to the hope that Joel would find his way back to them. He was wandering and lost, but he’d find his way back, somehow. Justin had to believe that.

-

“Arright, man,” Joel slurs, leaning heavily into Justin’s shoulder, “I’ll see ya t’morrow, ’kay?”

Justin loops an arm around Joel and pulls him into his chest. “You promise me you’ll see me tomorrow,” Justin says, staggering, dragging Joel with him. “Promise! Okay?”

“ ’kay, man, promise! Shit, you’re a bossy drunk!” Joel laughs, pushing Justin away. “M’ride’s here. I’ll see ya. Go home an’ make it up to your li’l lady.” Joel gives Justin an army salute and hurls himself into the back of the sleek yellow cab.

Justin waves after him, watches until the cab’s tail lights disappear.

-

They interrogate—the cops say ‘interview’—him for what feels like hours because he’s the last known person to have seen Joel _alive_. He wonders if they think he had something to do with it, but neither cop tips their hand.

According to the grizzled old male cop, he’s a total wreck—a total wreck with a killer headache jackhammering away in his skull, thank you very much—and ultimately unhelpful. The lady cop gives him a Styrofoam cup of shitty black coffee, and the male cop grills him about the previous night. They play their good-guy/bad-guy roles flawlessly. 

Justin just tells them what he remembers, which isn’t much, and they let him go after a little while.

He feels useless standing there in the lobby, like a paralyzed limb or something, sipping at his bitter coffee. Something that’s not much good to anyone.

-

Justin looks down and opens his hand.

Rachel’s tucked a folded photograph in his hand. When he flattens it and gets a good look at it, all the associated memories come flooding back. He starts feeling a little overwhelmed so he sets his box down and sits in front of his locker. He runs his thumb along the crease down the center of the photo and stares at the empty locker opposite his, the one with the brass plaque bearing **JOEL ZUMAYA** over it.

The picture’s of him and Joel, when they clinched the Wild Card in ’06. They were on the top of the world, didn’t think anything could touch them or bring them down. They were right, for at least a little while. 

He flips it over; _September 24, 2006! Celebrate good times, come on!_ is written on the back in Rachel’s hand.

Justin folds the photo back up and sticks it in his cardboard box. He pushes himself to his feet wearily, takes one last look at Joel’s empty locker, and heads out.

-

People still report seeing Joel in various places. A young woman reported seeing him at a gas station in Amarillo, Texas, filling up a Harley, a red bandana wrapped around his head. A kid reported seeing him chilling at a skatepark in San Diego, and that had been the most promising of the leads, but it wasn’t him. An old hunter claimed he found what remained of Joel’s body floating in a creek in the U.P., because of a necklace the corpse was wearing, but it wasn’t him either.

It was never him.

-

Justin decides there’s nothing worse than not knowing. Every day that passes without Joel, alive or dead, the deeper the knife twists.

-

#### POSTED: AUGUST 10, 2011

# VERLANDER TO BE PLACED ON 15-DAY DISABLED LIST FOR ‘ACUTE STRESS DISORDER’

BY JOHN LOWE  
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

The Detroit Tigers announced that they will be placing three-time All-Star Justin Verlander on the 15-day disabled list with what the team is calling an ‘acute stress disorder’. The Tigers have recalled Andrew Oliver from Triple-A Toledo and he will take Verlander’s next scheduled start on Tuesday—

-

Justin comes back as scheduled fifteen days later, and bumps Oliver back to Toledo. He pitches leaps and bounds better than he had been before he went on the D.L., so everyone figures he’s cured of whatever had been ailing him. SportsCenter starts mentioning his name in the same sentence as Felix Hernández’s and Francisco Liriano’s when they talk about Cy Young frontrunners. Some mention Matt Morris and Darryl Kile and Justin and Joel in the same breath too, but Justin tries not to think too much about that.

It’s ridiculous that people think fifteen days could cure him, that fifteen days could fix whatever Joel’s disappearance had broken.

They’re wrong, nothing’s been fixed. The alcohol helps, though.

-

Justin was out of baseball a handful of mediocre to outright bad years later. After the fact, they started saying maybe he did it on purpose, all those unlucky injuries, that maybe it was one big cry for help or something. They were always full of shit, though. It had never been about a cry for help, for attention. 

It had always been about forgetting.

-

He stood in front of the grave. Someone had been there recently, left behind bouquets of flowers and cards. It had been his birthday a few weeks before. It must have been his family.

Justin dropped to a knee in the soft, cold grass and tucked a folded photograph amongst the cards and flowers left behind by Joel’s family. The back of the photograph read _September 24, 2006! Celebrate good times, come on!_

Justin pushed himself to his feet with a groan and brushed his hands off. His damaged knee barked painfully and he bent to rub it. There was still a lot of scar tissue in there, and all the doctors he went to told him he ought to have it cleaned out, but he never got around to it.

Joel’s headstone was pretty, pink speckled granite. Justin reached out and touched it; it was smooth and cool, seemed wrong, incongruous for someone so warm, vibrant and _alive_ as Joel was.

He pulled his hand back and tucked it in the pocket of his jeans.

Wind rustled in the trees and Justin pulled his jacket around him a little tighter. It was a little chilly, even for San Diego in November. Pumpkin-colored leaves and stray wrappers swirled around Justin’s ankles. He put his hand back on the headstone and let the cold seep through to the bone.

There were no neat and tidy resolutions, not when someone you loved and cared about disappeared, seemingly off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again. Joel’s family had chosen something that worked for them. They erected a headstone and held a memorial service every year. They’d given themselves permission to move on. Justin’s former teammates had done the same, meeting every year in Inge’s basement for drinks and reminiscence.

None of it worked quite right for Justin. All he knew was that the plot was empty and the headstone said **REMEMBERED: JULY 15, 2011** , not **DIED: JULY 15, 2011**.

Maybe he’d never know what happened. Maybe Joel would come back. Maybe they’d find his body someday. All Justin knew was that he wasn’t going to stop looking.

“Goodbye, buddy. See you next year.” 

Justin gave the stone a pat and walked back to his car.

-

Joel comes flying at him with a bottle of champagne, foam everywhere, in his eyes, mouth, even his nose. Justin doesn’t have the benefit of goggles like Joel does.

“Goddammit, Joel,” Justin howls, wrapping his hands around the neck of the bottle. “Give it to me, you’re gonna kill someone with this thing!”

Joel giggles, pushing the goggles up to rub at his already bloodshot eyes. “Stings, man. But it’s the good kinda stingin’.”

“How much of this stuff’ve you drank already?” Justin manages to loosen Joel’s hands around the bottle and takes a deep drink. He reaches up and drags the wet sleeve of his fleece across his face. “Never tasted better.”

Joel breaks into a wide grin and loops an arm around Justin’s shoulders. “Me neither.” He tugs Justin into his chest and grinds his knuckles in his wet, sticky hair.

Justin jerks away and punches Joel in the chest, playfully. “I hear it’s better when you clinch the Championship Series,” Justin says, grinning.

Joel puts his head on Justin’s shoulder and Justin reaches up to pat his hair. “Can’t wait, man, can’t fuckin’ wait. ’s gonna be the best. ’s gonna be us liftin’ that World Series trophy.”

“Hey, guys, cheese!”

Justin and Joel both look up to a flash of light. Rachel, Joel’s girlfriend, lowers her digital camera, grinning broadly. Her curly hair is damp with champagne too.

“C’mon,” Joel says, surging forward, slinging an arm around her waist and pulling her close, “lemme see what you got!”

“Me too!” Justin shoulders his way between the two of them.

Rachel holds the display up so they can both see. Joel has his head on Justin’s shoulder and Justin has an arm around Joel’s waist. They’re both wearing matching grins.

Justin grins at Rachel and then Joel, blinking against the sting of the champagne in his eyes. “Best day of my life, bar none.”

Joel squeezes the back of his neck. “Me too, man. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.


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